UPS delivered the bass - but where's the box?

[leanne]

Okay, this is really uncool. My boyfriend bought a sweeeet Ray Ramirez baby bass type electric upright, and it was shipped in a big box packed all nicely and stuff. The person who boxed it up says they spent two hours getting it nice and secured and protected.

Now today, a day late, the UPS guy shows up, and he's got the bass in the gig bag in his hand, with the shipping label wrapped around the handle of the bag, and the stand is somehow tied onto the shoulder staps. No box. What???

So the UPS guy says it was shipped that way. Um, no...

Of course the bass got messed up, the neck is broken near the headstock and there are all kinds of dings and red dents and gouges. (The inside of the gig bag is red.) It sucks! There are still some fragments of peanuts stuck in part of the stand, but that's all that was left of any sort of packing...

Where the hell is the box? Why would they just bring it here like that? I've read some other posts about people receiving a bass in nothing but a case... Why do these things end up without their boxes? These people must be out of their minds!

I guess we should be happy that it was at least in the gig bag still...?? Jeez.

Leanne

[Eyescream]

They brought it like that cause it was brutalized in shipping and they didn't want the box to become evidence that once again, UPS screwed up something.

Since there's no box, I don't really know that you have any recourse against the shipping company, though.

[leanne]

Originally Posted by Eyescream

Since there's no box, I don't really know that you have any recourse against the shipping company, though.

Nah, I think that part is cool, because there was a box, and they know it, and so far haven't contested that fact. I believe a claims adjustor or something already visited today the UPS place or store or wherever it got boxed and sent from. I'm fairly confident that this will get worked out okay, considering the cooperation of and close contact with the seller, but I'm horrified that a shipping company would treat any item like this, and just pretend it never happened??

I think they're gonna have to refund at least part of the shipping price too (with insurance it was $175 since it was so huge I guess), since it was guaranteed to arrive yesterday. They're really costing themselves a bunch of money on this one. So stupid...

[Eyescream]

Well, that's alright then. I was thinking they just tossed the box after it got beat the hell up and said "what? I dunno anything about a box. this is the way it came to us."

It's cool that it's apparently getting taken care of.

[Benjamin Strange]

I understand there's some sort of class action lawsuit against UPS for this sort of thing. You might want to Google it and get in on it.

[nonsqtr]

I'm sorry to hear about your unfortunate UPS experience. I hope the package was insured. If it was, you're home free. UPS has had a "new" policy in force for quite a while now, which is that they won't accept any insured shipments unless they're properly packed. Probably this relates to portions of the class action lawsuit, some elements of which UPS feels are frivolous and due to improper packing. Or maybe they're just trying to get away with botched shipments, who knows. But if they give you any problems at all in relation to the insurance, don't even waste your time talking with them. Get the shipping company to write you a notarized affidavit affirming that they did indeed ship it in a box (and any supporting documents are good) and file the case immediately in small claims court. Chances are good you'll get a faster resolution that way. Good luck, I hope it works out for you.

[Woodchuck]

Friend of mine ordered a custom bass, and the builder has his own labeled boxes, but the bass showed up in a Dean box. Upon further inspection, he found out that the package had been opened. Since the bass was in perfect shape, he didn't squawk about it, but neither he nor the builder have used UPS since.

[Paul A]

Just to let you know, UPS are just as good at breaking things over here in the U.K.
I ordered an Ashdown EB150 combo.
When it FINALLY (after having gone round the U.K. twice) arrived it had been hit so hard that the cabinet was split in two!
The only thing holding it together was the carpet covering!

[DigMe]

Wow, that takes shipping company incompetency to a whole new level. I guess they've hired someone to rip all the products out of their boxes and discard them so they can fit more junk in their trucks.

brad cook

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Paul A

Just to let you know, UPS are just as good at breaking things over here in the U.K.
I ordered an Ashdown EB150 combo.
When it FINALLY (after having gone round the U.K. twice) arrived it had been hit so hard that the cabinet was split in two!
The only thing holding it together was the carpet covering!

That's one of the reasons I wouldn't buy anything by mail order from the USA - even if it was a huge bargain!!

I've been inside international parcel sorting offices and seen what happens!!


So in large automated sites, bags of parcels are picked up automatically and often fall from a great height, when the parcel bag splits. Also - line of parcels are fed down ramps - now if your fairly fragile parcel is followed by a very heavy parcel, the latter can pick up speed as it goes down the incline of the ramp and slam into the fragile parcel in front, at great speed by the time they both get to the bottom of the ramp!!

I've seen parcels totally disintegrate into pieces, when hit by another large solid box, coming down a ramp onto them!!

[Paul A]

Bruce,
It wasn't bought from the U.S. - it came form Sound Control in Glasgow!

[Sundogue]

I've been shipping and recieving parcels from UPS, Fed Ex and others for years.

I ship paintings worth thousands of dollars and I have also shipped and recieved fragile telescopes (expensive ones). It's all in the packaging.

It's not so much the box, but what's inside the box, and how it's packed, that makes it safe or not.

I have never, in almost 30 years, ever recieved telescopes, or had any customers of mine recieve paintings that were damaged in any way. The boxes might have been trashed by poor handling, but the contents were in perfect shape.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that once you ship it, it is out of your control. With that thought, a package must be built to withstand damn near anything. Packaging within packaging is the route to take. The contents first need to be isolated from the container so that any damage to the container itself does not come in contact with the contents.

Also, the contents need to be surrounded by shock absorbing material (custom shaped foam for instance). This is then placed into the first box. Then this inner box needs to be isolated from a second outer box by surrounding it with more shock absorbing material (packing peanuts are fine for this). Then to top it off, the outer box needs to have reinforced corners and the open, flat areas need to have double layers of corrugated cardboard that have spacers in between them.

I've worked in shipping. I was also a box designer. There are too many companies that are too cheap with the shipping containers, and too careless as to how their product is packaged within that container.

Knowing how fragile a musical instrument is, imagine how fragile telescopes are (with $1000 glass lenses that are accurately mounted within extremely tight tolerances...that cannot afford to be jostled out of alignment). Yet these get shipped all the time, by UPS, Fed Ex, etc. and most (not all) are recieved with no damage whatsoever.

Granted UPS and Fed Ex et al, should be more careful with packages marked as fragile, but in reality they don't treat "fragile" packages any different than any other package. It's up to the shipper to insure safe shipping, and it is entirely possible to do that. It's too bad that some companies ship out expensive items in something amounting to a stiff grocery bag.

[Edwcdc]

Having worked at UPS I can explain what most likely happened to your box.
When a box comes off the trailer it goes onto a belt to the primary sort. Next it goes to the secondary sort and then to a boxline where it gets put on a truck. The belt system it travels on makes many turns and often times boxes get jammed up in the turns or if any of the sorts get backed up the boxes just keep coming and smashing into each other. There is a rail at the bottom of the sort chute and boxes get crushed there. So some where in the system the box got beat up bad enough that it probably just fell off of the contents. The bass and the beat up box came down the same line. The sorter took the label off of the box and put it with the item so as far as the driver is concerned that is the way he got it.
The sorter should have given your package to his supervisor who should have notified the shipper of the damage.
I am not a big fan of UPS.

[thrash_jazz]

This thread scares the hell out of me...

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Paul A

Bruce,
It wasn't bought from the U.S. - it came form Sound Control in Glasgow!

The internal automated Parcel Sorting offices are just the same - the ofiices I saw, handled both. I can remember seeing something like a small box of china, being crushed by a domestic appliance like a fridge or oven, in a huge box, hurtling down a ramp!!

The only difference with internationally-shipped items is that they go through more of these automated sorting offices and hence have a greater chance of getting smashed - but it only really takes one, to get your parcel !!

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Edwcdc

Having worked at UPS I can explain what most likely happened to your box.
When a box comes off the trailer it goes onto a belt to the primary sort. Next it goes to the secondary sort and then to a boxline where it gets put on a truck. The belt system it travels on makes many turns and often times boxes get jammed up in the turns or if any of the sorts get backed up the boxes just keep coming and smashing into each other. There is a rail at the bottom of the sort chute and boxes get crushed there. So some where in the system the box got beat up bad enough that it probably just fell off of the contents. The bass and the beat up box came down the same line. The sorter took the label off of the box and put it with the item so as far as the driver is concerned that is the way he got it.

That's the sort of thing I was trying to describe - it was in a big warehouse and the belt that the parcels were on, went up to the ceiling them back down to ground level - so very heavy parcels tended to speed up on the way down and pulverise anything that they hit at the bottom!!

After seing one of those places, you wonder how anything gets delivered intact - unless it's in a solid metal box!!

[Sundogue]

Originally Posted by Joshua

Firstly, having worked at UPS myself for @ 4 years (as well as one of their competitors) I agree 100% with this post. I can only add that it might be too rosy a picture.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I wouldn't ship a brick thru UPS.

And you think Fed Ex is any better? Think again. The bigger a shipping comany gets, the less care is involved in handling. Only the smaller shipping firms handle things safer, mostly because they do not use automated methods for sorting...and they are not rushed for delivery in the way the big guys are.

It's still about packaging. The only way an item I ship would ever get damaged would be for it to be driven over.

[Woodchuck]

Originally Posted by Joshua

Firstly, having worked at UPS myself for @ 4 years (as well as one of their competitors) I agree 100% with this post. I can only add that it might be too rosy a picture.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I wouldn't ship a brick thru UPS.

I was an unloader for UPS (evening shift) about 9 years ago, and I won't go into detail about things, but trust me, it ain't pretty. One example: Some people on the dock had a running contest on who could break the most computer monitors. When the Tech Data truck came in, they'd go nuts! Since the belts extended inside of the trailers, and out of view, they'd take them off the pile and slam them onto the unloading belt hoping to hear the screen breaking.

[Edwcdc]

Originally Posted by Joshua

Firstly, having worked at UPS myself for @ 4 years (as well as one of their competitors) I agree 100% with this post. I can only add that it might be too rosy a picture.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I wouldn't ship a brick thru UPS.

I'm sure UPS could break a brick in half.
They don't like to shut the line down no matter how bad it gets backed up. I remember sorting and having to pry crushed boxes off the rail while a supervisor clocks my packages per hour with a stop watch. You would think in order to let the sorters get caught up and to keep freight from getting damaged they would turn off the belt. Nah that would make the supervisor look bad. Can't have that.

[Edwcdc]

Originally Posted by Woodchuck

I was an unloader for UPS (evening shift) about 9 years ago, and I won't go into detail about things, but trust me, it ain't pretty. One example: Some people on the dock had a running contest on who could break the most computer monitors. When the Tech Data truck came in, they'd go nuts! Since the belts extended inside of the trailers, and out of view, they'd take them off the pile and slam them onto the unloading belt hoping to hear the screen breaking.

I must be sick because that made me grin. I know breaking stuff is bad. Sorry.

Hey woodchuck, your'e at 4,999 posts